Crackpot

9/11 was a political cabaret; a lightshow of theatrics and holographics; a cirque du skyline.

We never went to any moon past Kubrick’s imagination or the blinding eclipse that is organised government.

Colonel Sanders is a myth.

Zeph lay tucked beneath the safe luxury of belief, her mental life cradling her figure and filling each little pocket of cold she curled away from. She stretched her lithe, reptilian feet towards a cosmos wherein her daydreams and night terrors both had an equal chance at The Truth. Zeph kept her heart wrapped snuggly in aluminium foil, a toasty nugget of paranoia and pride. Denial coloured her world with quixotism, as her freedom allowed. Zeph felt fulfilled in social theorem and experience, pumping with bombastic spirit and ‘spiracy.

She Was Not Alone. Not at all.

In her youth, Zeph had met with her share of cerebral showdowns and chronic nay-sayers, but adversity merely vulcanised the dogmata she proselytised so ferociously. She had reached past the days of standing alone in doctrine, of swigging cyanide Kool-Aid in no company but her own. Her hands now danced triumphantly across keyboards, with fantastical ideas of that which danced beyond the stars. Zeph’s weekends were laced with webs of ideas, friendships, activism. There was no more loyal a friend than a Truther, and no better a gathering than that arranged by an apocalyptic pariah. It was a community of cult status and schism suspicions.

She Wanted To Believe. So she did.

***

Each week, she would attend a meeting with her peers to formally discuss new theories, new developments, and new world orders. Last time, Zeph had demonstrated more findings from her popular, long-standing study of triangles, both illuminous and Bermudinous. She was known by the group for her depth of research, her persuasion and her self-assuredness.

Today, however, she was mortified of The New Truth she was to share. Rarely did these meetings become heated, but amidst enigmatism and esotericism, tempers could melt steel beams.

A metallic heartbeat rustled frantically beneath its shield of bravado. For the first time in years, Zeph was afraid of philosophical rejection — would the mere suggestion be too outlandish, even for her peers?

She would be exposed, alien, and presumed insane. Yet, she was still no less convinced.

Zeph found the familiar set of eyes in the audience, and spoke to these her Truth.